How HUB International Unified Its Talent Strategy In a Decentralized Environment

Insurance is a relationship business. Deals are built on trust, and so is talent. At HUB International, one of the largest insurance brokerages in North America, the talent acquisition (TA) team understood this well, but their technology wasn’t keeping up. With 20,000+ employees across highly autonomous regions in the U.S. and Canada, HUB operated less like a single company and more like a network of businesses that happened to share a name. Each region did its own thing, and recruiting was no exception.

Getting decentralized teams to adopt new tools and shared practices is one of the harder change management problems in HR.

At IAMPHENOM 2026, Jackie Ellison, National Director of Talent Acquisition for Canada, and Alisa Schroth, Talent Operations Advisor at HUB, walked through how they approached it with Phenom and why the results surprised even them.

Watch the full session here, or explore the highlights below.

What Happens When Every Region Recruits Its Own Way?

Before Phenom, recruiters were largely working out of LinkedIn — tracking contacts, managing pipelines, and keeping notes on their own. But without a shared view of talent across the organization, they had no way to know whether a strong candidate who didn’t get the job in one region might be perfect for an opening somewhere else. Silver medalists got lost. Geography-based talent pools didn’t exist. And any campaign strategy was entirely dependent on whether an individual recruiter thought to send a follow-up.

The data fragmentation extended to visibility. Without a unified view, TA leaders had no reliable way to see pipeline health, track candidate movement, or identify where drop-off was happening. HUB also faced an aging workforce challenge that makes talent pipeline management especially consequential in insurance: a significant portion of the workforce is nearing retirement age, and there’s competition for experienced insurance professionals. As a result, building relationships ahead of need is critical.

And layered over all of it was the decentralization challenge itself. Any new platform was going to require buy-in from regions that had historically operated independently and had little reason to trust that a corporate-driven rollout would actually work for them.

How Did They Build a Talent Tech Strategy That Actually Stuck?

To solve their challenges, HUB went live with Phenom’s comprehensive Applied AI solution in June 2024.

A main focus? Building their Talent CRM strategy around structured tagging: silver medalists, geography, language, and other attributes that would make it possible to surface the right candidate at the right time, even across regions. Campaigns launched to nurture those pools, and automated interview scheduling was introduced to reduce friction in the candidate experience.

But the technology was only part of the equation. The piece that made it work was the training model. Schroth developed what she called “Phenom Power Sessions,” which were 30-minute, role-specific trainings designed to meet recruiters where they were rather than forcing them through generic onboarding. Super users and champions were identified within each region to serve as peer advocates, not just corporate messengers.

Browser extensions made CRM engagement easier for teams already deep in their day-to-day work. And every session, resource, and tool tip was built around a simple principle of What’s in it for the recruiter? “You have to understand what drives each region, what they’re worried about, and you have to meet them there,” said Ellison. The team spent significant time in the early months listening before pushing any new workflows, and that investment in understanding paid off in the engagement numbers.

What Can a 173% Jump in CRM Engagement Tell You About Adoption?

The numbers that came out of HUB’s first year with Phenom reflect how much ground they covered in a short time:

173% increase in CRM user engagement
10% interview cancellation rate
51% open rate
83% completion rate
100% real-time visibility achieved

The 173% growth in CRM engagement meant that recruiters who had previously been operating in silos were actively building shared talent pipelines. The 51% campaign open rate pointed to something more specific: the messaging was landing because it was relevant. Targeted campaigns to geography-specific or skill-specific pools outperformed generic outreach by a wide margin. “When you’re sending the right message to the right people, the numbers show it,” Schroth said.

The interview metrics told a different story about candidate experience. An 83% completion rate alongside a 10% cancellation rate suggested their scheduling and communication changes were working. Candidates showed up because they knew what to expect and because the friction of getting to the interview had been reduced. For an organization competing for experienced insurance talent, every completed interview matters.

Where Is HUB Taking Its Talent Strategy Next?

The team is building toward a more proactive hiring model. That means expanding automation workflows, deepening the hiring manager experience within Phenom, and building out dashboards that give TA leaders real-time visibility into pipeline health across regions.

“We are leaning into AI, combining service-based criteria with automation to give us a real competitive edge in the insurance talent market,” said Schroth.

The longer arc of what HUB is building matters in the context of what they’re up against. Insurance is an industry where relationships are currency, and the workforce is aging. The organizations that figure out how to build talent pipelines before they need them, and maintain those relationships at scale, will have a structural advantage. HUB is making that bet now, and their first year’s results suggest it’s a reasonable one.

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Pooja Thammina